Heliotropic

Christ, how does an entire month go sailing past, and I manage just one, pathetic blog post? Have I become that bereft of ideas? Or I am just so fucking lazy that the ideas I do manage to have (and remember) are just not worth the effort? Or could it be that blogger and my computer are seemingly conspiring against me to make any idea I do manage to have fucking impossible to type, and get corrected without calling in a special task force of computer geeks?

I haven't had cable in months, so in theory I should be devoting more of my time to my 'writing.' Clearly that idea doesn't not seem to have worked out, as you can tell by the dearth of posts lately. I am not sure how I have managed to waste the time I used to waste in front of the boob tube, but wasted it has been. That is a crime of which I have no defense, and should be (am) rightly ashamed of myself. I know that I am not a great (or even good writer), but I also know that I am a better writer than when I first started this blog (even if I still can not spell for shit, and my grammar is abysmal).  Like any skill, writing takes practice, and that is what I am doing when I write these rambling, senseless posts with obscure titles. I am practicing, what for I am not exactly sure, but I hope that will reveal itself someday.

In this case, that title is heliotropic, a fairly obscure title, and I trust your own ability to Wikipedia the damn thing, and read all about it. The gist of it is that it is a type of reaction to certain plants to the sun. Solar tracking is now the politically correct term, but that just sounds a bit stalkerish to me, so I will use heliptropic. I might use it out of context, or I might (more likely) be using it in my own obscure way to prove a point. Either way it is a great word, and I am going to try to work it into as many sentences as I can, just so I can look all educated and shit. Not that I am not educated, but my vocabulary would make a sailor stop and pause, and I need to fix that. I paid (and will be paying forever) for the classical education that (supposedly) taught all these fancy words, and it is about time I started getting my money's worth, and I am not talking about fancy words that will just help me win one of the thousand of 'words with friends' games I am currently playing.

Heliotropism (see I can use it in different tenses even, yay me!) would appear, at first blush, to be the type of behaviour that would be beneficial for the plant. After all, the sun that M type star that light takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth from, is the life giving, blob that keeps plants, and by extension the rest of life on Earth, from oblivion. Terminal oblivion, not the oblivion that we all love to reach after about 6 Loratab, or 12 beers in about 3 hours. That oblivion is sweet bliss, at least to some of us, but without that M type star around, we would be facing the end of everything that we know. That end, which is going to happen when the Sun goes all red giant on us, is something that we all have to face. Be it our demise, downfall, or merely a fall from grace. Each of us have one waiting for us. Maybe just around the corner, or maybe in the middle distance, or maybe (hopefully) light years away.

If it is not our demise (which we can have no reaction to) the downfall or fall from grace could be a defining moment of our life. How we handle that moment is something that we each have to sort out for ourselves. We will be judged by our handling of the situation, and it is important that we handle it 'well'. Not for the audience, they are just happy that the downfall is happening to us, not them, their reaction means fuck all at the end of the day. It is how we handle it for ourselves, that is what counts. When the time comes to stand up, keep a stiff upper lip, and be 'a man,' it is incumbent upon us to do the right thing. 


The tricky part is figuring out what the right thing is, and once you're lucky enough to sort that out, well then you are golden. Like you've been bronzed by the sun golden. Just be careful to remember as you are basking in your bronze skin, and heliotropic behaviour, the sun, if you lollygag too long under its rays, can burn you to a crisp.

The Trust

You lazily asked me if I trusted you, "Of course I do" I replied. After all what I am supposed to say? The 'real' truth about how I trust? I doubt you would take kindly to that, few people have over the years, and besides I am (still) trying to be a better person. Part of that attempt is to change the way I 'trust' people. I fear that I may be failing at that attempt. I blame society, and predicatibility. 

As you may have noticed if you read any of this blog, I am a card carrying, people hating, misanthrope. I deal with a lot of people on a daily basis that reinforce my dislike of the human race, and it is something that helps define me. The sad part of this tale is the fact that I DO trust people, but it is a negative trust. A trust built upon years of (bad) experience(s), and a mean streak a mile wide. I trust people to betray me. It will happen, despite all their protests to the contrary, they will betray me. And, truth be told, I will probably betray them. Life is sort of a race to see who betrays whom first. Eventually, myself or my 'friends' will be faced with the classical 'me or him/her' dilemma, and if they or me have any sense whatsoever, the choice will be me (i.e. the person faced with the dilemma). It is human nature, and it is natural, to pick me over them it is hard wired into my DNA. I am sorry, I know it makes me a bad person, and all that, but I am the only person that I am certain I can trust in a positive sense. Even then I sometimes wonder if I am not my own worst enemy, but until I push my own self under the bus, I have to hope that I, mostly, act in my own best interests, depsite quite a large amount of evidence to the contrary. 

And no matter how long we've known each other, in any sense, and no matter how much we 'love' each other, or how well we get along, or if I am the benevolent "uncle" to your children, our interests are not identical. At some point the you or me situation will come up, and I, maybe with regret, maybe not, will be forced to choose me. It makes me a bad person, but it ensures that I will at least remain a person.  I expect you to do the same. The knife that will be buried hilt deep in my, or your back, will have a name on it. The name might cause you or me sadness, but at the end of the day, knives kill. That just what they do, the name on the blade isn't going to make dying any easier or more difficult.

That knife, if it carries a familar name, will be a farewell present between us. A sort of lethal 'have a nice life' parting gift for a contestant that just was unable to survive the 'showcase showdown' that is life. It will sever ties (and if well placed, other things) between us, and until I, or you remove it, will be a constant reminder that negative trust can sometimes be the best kind of trust. After all we expected this didn't we? We discussed it on the front end, and agreed (maybe over a couple too many beers) that the kind of trust we share is negative, and that eventually (hopefully not for a long time, but still eventually) one of us will not survive to continue the relationship between us. It will be sad, funny, tragic, and fatal all at the same time but, it will happen as sure as the sun rises in the east, it is one thing that, even though I'm not supposed to, I will bet on with a sad certainty.

P.S.  The picture above is of the actor Sam Neill playing Sidney Reilly in "Reilly: Ace of Spies" a lovely PBS mini series from a zillion years ago. The point of the picture, other than Mr. Neill is one handsome fellow, is this. Sidney Reilly was a master spy, a man at home in the house of deceit, lies, and betrayal. Yet, his downfall was to be lured back to Russia to support an alleged anti-Bolshievk group that was to try to overthrow V.I. Lenin. It wasn't a real group it was a group set up by the NKVD to lure Reilly and others to Russia in order to have them killed. Its name, well it was, ever so aptly, called "The Trust."